Billy Name

Of the many faces who passed through Andy Warhol’s silver Factory in the swinging 1960s and 70s, Billy Name was undoubtedly one of its most important unsung heroes. Partly because he was always armed with a camera; as the story goes, when Warhol first picked up a movie camera he thrust his old Pentax SLR at Name, with the instruction: “Billy, you do the photography now, because I’m going to do movies.” Name had an eye for taking photographs, and he duly assumed the role of unofficial photographer in his years hanging out at the Factory, diligently snapping away at the strange and wonderful characters and goings-on. “As I recall he was always at the factory,” John Cale remembers in his foreword to new book Billy Name: The Silver Age. “The pimpernel of the silver ballroom – sleeping there as a wide-eyed guard, then much later disappearing into his room for months at a time only to emerge, to take pictures, then retreat back into silent oblivion.”

Name not only documented the Factory, but also played a pivotal role in constructing it. Previously a lighting designer, his first encounter with amphetamines was instrumental in the birth of his signature silver interior decorating style, and he employed it with abandon in the film and theatre sets he worked on throughout the 1960s. As Glenn O’Brien remembers in his introduction to the book: “One day Ondine gave Billy some amphetamines. Billy recalled, ‘All of a sudden I had energy to get up off the floor and start doing things.’ One of the first things Billy did was redecorate the apartment as an artwork, turning the whole thing silver with aluminum foil and spray paint.”

When Warhol visited Name’s apartment to attend one of his famous hair-cutting parties soon afterwards – Name’s father had been a barber – he invited Name to recreate the style at his new loft, a former hat factory on East 47th Street. “Andy didn’t just see a guy’s place and think, ‘That’s a real kook – he’s got foil all over the place,’” Name recalls. “He saw that I had done an installation.”

Name duly hung the walls with aluminium foil, and sprayed everything with Krylon paint. The Silver Factory was born. “It was like constructing this environment,” he said. “For me the whole place was a sculpture. And each time I added a piece to it was like adding another gem to the collection. I never did a specifically articulated thing. I always did a maximal job, but it was the same art thing, it was the same signature, or my tag; the whole silver thing.”

The silver of the factory walls reverberates in Name’s photography – a seemingly never-ending series of lunar faces peering out from between the Factory walls; building installations, making prints, or having parties. “I’m very much interested in portraiture, not only of people but of space, or people in spaces,” he says in the book. “When I take a picture I’m usually looking at a certain structural composition of the whole thing that is going on live, and when it’s just perfect my finger pushes the button… The camera, when I first started using it, wasn’t just about snapshots. I could see things that were matched to my aesthetic framework in that click.”

His singular portraits epitomise Warhol’s golden age and all of the characters who contributed to it, many of whom – Brigid Berlin, Gerard Malanga, Viva, Mary Woronov – have also been involved in the creation of Name’s new book. Flicking through it almost feels like disappearing momentarily into the alternative universe of the Silver Factory; Name and his contemporaries’ memories accompany the photographs, animating the oft-captured faces of Edie Sedgwick, Nico and Brigid Berlin with a new and utterly compelling fervour. Above all, his extensive archive serves to remind us of how extraordinary this era really was.

Billy Name: The Silver Age is available now, published by Reel Art Press. The series will be available to view at at Serena Morton in London from September 30th until October 23rd.

I am a child of the 1970s, so Dennis Hopper really means two things to me, Blue Velvet first and Easy Rider second. For me, Hopper doesn’t have much of an identity before Easy Rider, which goes to explain why I had scarcely any idea of his excellent photography (and excellent connections to the art world) during the 1960s. This information helps inform some of his filmmaking career, for instance his artistic intransigence over The Last Movie—only someone steeped in modernist art and abstract expressionism would ever have made such a stand. Everyday I Show brings us an excellent selection of Hopper’s b/w pics from the 1960s, be sure to click there to see more of them. Hopper wasn’t in the league of a Diane Arbus or a Garry Winogrand, but he clearly knew what he was doing and also had some great subjects in the form of Jane Fonda, Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, plus Teri Garr (!).

When seeking to romanticize or humanize the turbulent lives of the Kennedys, few photographers came as far as Mark Shaw, who toured with then-Senator Kennedy during the 1959 presidential campaign, and eventually followed them to their home in Cape Cod. The President liked the pictures so much that Shaw eventually became the family’s de facto portraitist.

Many photographers besides Warhol himself tried to capture the copacetic energies of Warhol and the heiress and model Edie Sedgwick. Among the few successes was this three-part portrait by David McCabe, which echoes Warhol’s fascination with the New York tower as a metaphor for fame.

Many photographers besides Warhol himself tried to capture the copacetic energies of Warhol and the heiress and model Edie Sedgwick. Among the few successes was this three-part portrait by David McCabe, which echoes Warhol’s fascination with the New York tower as a metaphor for fame.

According to Khrushchev’s granddaughter, Nina L. Khrushcheva, this source of decades-long parody and embarrassment began when the Secretary General decided he was uncomfortable with a new pair of shoes. Railing in response to speeches by Philippines delegate Lorenzo Sumulong and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, he decided to take them off, and on his way back up to the lectern, decided to pick one up and bang it against the podium for effect. Though it is reproduced most of the time with a shoe inserted artificially into the Soviet premier’s hand, details about the notorious “Khrushchev shoe-banging incident” remain disputed.

Optimism about the progress of the Vietnam War reached a turning point following the Tet Offensive, during which Nguyen Van Lem, a soldier for the Viet Cong, was executed on the streets of Saigon by a South Vietnamese officer named Nguyen Ngoc Loan. The offensive, which interrupted a truce during the Tet lunar new year celebrations, jolted global perceptions of what Communist guerrillas in Vietnam were capable of, and gave ample fuel to the anti-war movement in America. UPDATE: Readers have rightly pointed out that noted photojournalist Eddie Adams (1933 – 2004) won a Pulitzer Prize for this image.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s mostly jesting protest against the Vietnam War took place shortly after the couple exchanged their vows on March 20, 1969 and took up residence in Room 902 at the Amsterdam Hilton. Knowing their new marriage would attract attention, Lennon and Ono deliberately sought friends in television and print media to announce that they would stay in bed for two weeks, in a variation on the popular “sit-in” strategy of peace activism. The following month, John and Yoko reportedly sent acorns, symbols of peace and rebirth, to heads of state around the world, hoping that they would be ceremonially replanted. They received no response.

Some find it heartening that the Sixties still resonate at all, with men and women who lived through those years and millions more who were born long after the decade ended; others decry the fact (or what they see as the fact) that the ideals of the era have been irretrievably co-opted by the triumph of turbocharged consumerism; still others find the entire mythology of the Age of Aquarius utterly obnoxious and tiresome, and can not wait for the Woodstock Generation to, quite frankly, die off.

But even the most ardent Sixties-bashers can sometimes find themselves inexorably drawn to the era — or, as the case may be, to one specific, pivotal year.

Take 1967. There was an awful lot going on in the U.S. and around the world at the time. The war in Vietnam was only getting bloodier. Race riots rocked American cities. Baseball fans reveled in one of the most exciting pennant races in history. A young comedian named Woody Allen was killing in Vegas. Iran crowned a new Shah. The “counterculture,” in all its protean forms, was in full bloom. Hippies were flooding to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury — soon to be followed by far more toxic forces (meth and heroin, for example, and the casualties that customarily follow in their wake) that would effectively bring an ugly end to the “Summer of Love” almost before it began.

The Andy Warhol Museum released images that were recently recovered from an Amiga computer. Warhol created the images as part of a commission by the Commodore computer company, which made the Amiga, to demonstrate the computer’s graphic arts capabilities. The images had been trapped on floppy discs in an obsolete format. One of the images released is this self-portrait titled “Andy2.” The Andy Warhol Museum released images that were recently recovered from an Amiga computer. Warhol created the images as part of a commission by the Commodore computer company, which made the Amiga, to demonstrate the computer’s graphic arts capabilities. The images had been trapped on floppy discs in an obsolete format. One of the images released is this self-portrait titled “Andy2.”

Warhol used the Amiga to create this version of a Campbell’s soup can.

Warhol created his vision of “Venus” with three eyes.

The Commodore Amiga computer, software and other equipment used by Warhol.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
The works, created on an Amiga computer, were trapped on floppy disks
They include doodles and experiments with the pop artist’s iconic images
Archivist: “We can only wonder how he would explore and exploit” today’s technologies

(CNN) — The soup can looks familiar in an unfamiliar way, but the name at the bottom of the image is unmistakable: Andy Warhol.

The Andy Warhol Museum announced Thursday the discovery of new works by the pop artist, works which had been trapped on floppy disks for close to 30 years.

They were made on an Amiga computer in 1985 and were unlocked by the Carnegie Mellon University Computer Club and its Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, according to a statement from the museum.

“Warhol saw no limits to his art practice. These computer-generated images underscore his spirit of experimentation and his willingness to embrace new media — qualities which, in many ways, defined his practice from the early 1960s onwards,” said Eric Shiner, The Warhol’s director.

The works were commissioned by the now-defunct Commodore International to showcase the computer’s capabilities. They include doodles and experiments with Warhol’s iconic images, like the Campbell’s soup can.

The works might have been lost forever if it had not been for Cory Arcangel, an artist who watched a YouTube clip showing Warhol promoting the release of the Amiga 1000 in 1985.

He started to poke around, eventually approaching the museum’s chief archivist to talk about the possibility of searching for the files amid The Warhol’s archives collection.

“In the images, we see a mature artist who had spent about 50 years developing a specific hand-to-eye coordination now suddenly grappling with the bizarre new sensation of a mouse in his palm held several inches from the screen,” said Matt Wrbican, the archivist.

The works have since been extracted and backed up so they can be saved, even if the floppy disks fail.

“We can only wonder how he would explore and exploit the technologies that are so ubiquitous today,” Wrbican said about Warhol.

Inside the counter-culture: An intimate look at Warhol, Ginsberg and friends through the radical lens of legendary photographer Richard Avedon

Richard Avedon was one of the most well-known fashion and portrait photographers in American history. However, many of his photographs had a distinctly political flavor.

His work photographing hippies, artists and icons of the beat generation was said to capture their very essence and offer an inside look at the counter-culture in a way that few portrait shooters have been able to match.

A collection of his radical portraits are on display at Gagosian Gallery in New York City this summer.

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The counter-culture: Allen Ginsberg, the beatnik poet, was a frequent subject. This work is titled: Louis Ginsberg and his son Allen Ginsberg, poets, Paterson, New Jersey, May 3, 1970

Avedon was known for shooting stark, minimalist portraits of his subjects that let their own personalities shine through.

‘A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he’s being photographed, and what he does with this knowledge is as much a part of the photograph as what he’s wearing or how he looks,’ he said, according to the Atlantic.

A Fan Letter from Campbell’s Soup to Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol adored Campbell’s Soup. That much is obvious. In fact, his mother’s pastime of cutting tin cans into flowers inspired his iconic soup can paintings. But if you ever wondered how Campbell’s felt about Warhol, today is your lucky day. A 1964 fan letter (which accompanied “a couple of cases” of tomato soup) from the company’s Product Marketing Manager to Warhol is after the jump.

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Hi I am an old hippie, a "beat" poet and novelist, and digital artist. I was co -editor and publisher of "Alpha Beat Press" alpha beat soup, bouillabaisse and cokefish and cokefishing in alpha beat soup with my late husband Dave Christy.
My novel "eeenie meenie minee moe is for sale on amazon books.
my other blogs are
http://tilliespuncturedromance.wordpress.com about humor and the weird. The blog is named after a Charlie Chaplin movie.
http://concretebologna.wordpress.com a blog about world art.